


On Heartache And Its Causes

by mellowly



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Character Death, Growing Old, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, sadness all around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 05:23:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13451445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mellowly/pseuds/mellowly
Summary: ludwig is excellent at math.pascal is even better.(or: ten times two is twenty.)





	On Heartache And Its Causes

**Author's Note:**

> Names used:
> 
> Ludwig - Germany
> 
> Pascal - Luxembourg
> 
> Marie - Belgium
> 
> Kristiansen - Norway

**march, Berlin, 2017**

* * *

 

Pascal is good at math, quite excellent, actually, which is why he’s come back to Berlin to work for the bank. It’s for this reason only, he convinces himself as he carries his boxes upstairs. Just for work. Nothing more.

It takes him three days to find Ludwig on the hospital’s work roster.

 

“Hello.”

“Hi. Have we met?”

Ludwig hardly looks at him at first, but then- But then. He sees the same face, the same blue eyes and gentle smile,  _ Pascal _ . The Pascal he’d known so well. His first boyfriend. His first love.

“We have. Of course we have.” 

He extends a hand to shake, at first, but then feels silly- ten  _ years _ \- and just then Pascal steps in between his arms and hugs him close.  
He still uses the same shampoo, Ludwig thinks, burying his face in his hair.

 

So they go on dates. Doing stuff. Looking at birds, talking, catching up, seeing that film they’d both wanted to go watch with someone else, and- And. They’d missed this. Ludwig had missed this.  The cool spring air meets them kindly at the door, and Pascal is holding his hand, and maybe this is all right after all. Maybe everything is okay.  


Pascal has stopped walking. Stopped breathing. Suddenly everything is  _ not all right _ because his maybe-not-really boyfriend doesn’t breathe, only clutches at his chest as the crowd parts around them to pass through onto the street.

 

 

Pascal topples

and _falls_.

 

 

From there it is a blur but also somehow crystal clear. Pascal’s blue lips. His bare chest when the ambulance nurse rips open his nice suit jacket and shirt to shock him back to life, again, again, again, _charging, clear, again, charging, clear!_ The bells of a church ringing ten in the distance.  
Pascal’s slow breath timed with his own in the back of the ambulance. Blue and golden lights mixing, and someone asking him if he’s all right, is he in shock? And no, no, of course not, nothing is alright, nothing at all because-

 

Words. They should mean something to him, really, he went to school for this after all, and really,  _ the irony _ , but all that matters is that Pascal is having surgery and Ludwig is so  _ afraid _ .  
Heart’s too big for his body, that’s what they’re telling him, and how that makes him laugh through his tears because wasn’t it always so?

  
_Heart’s too big. Nothing we can do._   Dr. Kristiansen is a nice guy, beneath the quiet, and he sits Ludwig down and breaks it to him politely. Almost too politely.

 

Setting in the ICD takes what feels like days. When he looks at his wristwatch it’s been three hours and he really wants to sleep, but then again it feels wrong to rest now. One of the nurses updates him regularly and it seems like everything is going well until he actually gets the prognosis. A number. A set time. 

Ten years, fifteen if he’s lucky.  
So little time. None at all. The blink of an eye.

 

Pascal sleeps and looks like the angel in the stained glass windows of his childhood church, hands folded and serene, bandages covering what he knows will be an ugly scar on his chest.  Ludwig is looking through the doorway when he wakes up. The fear in those same blue eyes, and then the ragged voice saying “Ludwig. Where is he, where is Ludwig-“ And before he can begin to cry Ludwig rushes inside, caution be damned.

“Ludwig, Ludwig-“ Pascal, the fool, tries to take off his oxygen mask and he’s done it before Ludwig can stop him and tries to sit up for some reason-

Weakly, he tugs at Ludwig's tie until he’s bent over, and then he kisses him.  


They haven’t kissed in years.

 

“You should leave.”

“I won’t.”

Pascal is crying. 

“I’ll hurt you. You don’t want me.”

“I do.”

“Please.”

“I’ll stay with you.”

They’re too tired to argue by now, and Ludwig takes him home. 

 

So they get married in August. Outdoors in the sunshine, white and gold and pleasantries.  
It’s nice, really, even if Pascal is so  _ tired _ all the time and they know their time is limited.

\---

And the years go by, as they will. Berlin shifts and changes around them but Ludwig doesn’t care about Berlin.  
They laugh, and they argue, and they cook and walk the dogs and make love in Pascal’s enormous bed and take baths in silence.

They live.

 

The funeral is quiet, and it’s March, things are coming back to life now but  _ not Pascal _ .  
Adam kneels in the dirt and feels the drizzling rain on his head like salvation, like a greeting, like a blessing. 

The small crowd thins and leaves him alone. Completely alone.  He takes a cornflower home and puts it in a little glass of water, a tiny memory besides the smell of shampoo on his pillows and the constant lingering  _ ache _ .

\---

After his fiftieth birthday, Ludwig visits Pascal more and more. He talks to him. Tells him the news, about new cars he’s seen in magazines, about Marie’s second baby, about how life is so dull without him. Sometimes he simply sits on the bench. Hands folded. Patient.

Like he’s waiting.

When the chest pain starts just after dinner, and it’s March again, he only smiles and takes a painkiller. No need to call for help.

 

He lies down happily on Pascal’s side of the bed, turns his face into the pillow that smells only of cotton.

Time to go _home_.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> the first work I've made for this pair - there'll probably be more. a rarepair indeed, but a good one. 
> 
> sorry, Pascal.


End file.
